


You Really Got A Hold On Me

by ghostlin



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Letters, M/M, Post-DOFP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 18:48:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7945276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostlin/pseuds/ghostlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You left me, again, but then you also left behind the helmet, and allowed me within reach of you. So you contradict yourself; you leave me even as you draw nearer."</p><p>A serious of letters exchanged by Dr Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr between 1974 and 1975.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Really Got A Hold On Me

**Author's Note:**

> The title is borrowed from the Beatles song. Just thought it kinda fitted. I have no knowledge of the comics, only the movies. This hasn't been beta'd so... yeah. Thanks for reading!

February 15th, 1974

 

Hello, Erik -- 

I am hoping this letter doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to you. You don’t need to be concerned about my knowing how to reach you; it’s one thing to send a letter halfway around the world, and quite another to track you down on foot. Well, metaphorically speaking.

There’s some part of me already predicting a certain level of anger at my reaching out to you this way. You may consider it a gross misuse of my abilities, tracking your psychic imprint in order to send you this.

I should tell you that I did try the more usual channels, but your new fugitive status renders a Post Office inquiry obsolete, and I’d rather not provoke the Foreign Office more than I already have. Regardless, this letter has a slight perception field around it. You won’t be in danger of prying eyes, at least not from my quarter.

I have learnt through Cerebro that you and Raven haven’t rekindled your alliance following last year’s events in Washington D.C. Her travels occasionally make the papers; you may have read about her rescue of several young mutants from a Japanese internment camp recently. I assume, by your comparative radio silence, that Poland is treating you well and that you find it an effective place in which to disappear. Evidently I wasn’t the only one who came away from Washington changed; you have never before been one to turn away from the action.

Yet the world continues to change around us, month upon month. Spring has arrived early here in Westchester; the students are settling into a new term, Hank has finally managed to get a hold on the climbing ivy that has been destabilising the brickwork in the East Wing, and I’m dividing my time between writing to Congress and teaching irregular French verbs to irate teenagers. I’ll leave it to you to picture my excitement at these prospects.

In fact, I started this letter to procrastinate. It’s a bit hit and miss, whether you’ll actually receive this; long range precision is a bit tricky, and the serum I used for so long has left me rather less accurate than I used to be. It’s possible the only audience this letter reaches may turn out to be cow in Amsterdam.

If this is in fact you, Erik, whatever it is that you’re doing with your time, my hope is still the same: that in whatever form it may take, somewhere, you’ve managed to find peace.

Yours,

Charles Xavier

 

-

 

April 23rd, 1974

 

Charles --  

I have been in my new lodgings for eight months now, without interruption of any outside communication. Fitting, that this first should come from you.

The glazed expression on the face of the postman tipped me off, it has to be said. I suspect you weren’t entirely honest about the lengths you went to ensuring your letter reached me.

Between us we seem to have settled for a quiet existence, far quieter than the one we planned those long years ago. Perhaps we should leave the action to Mystique. Retirement seems to suit you, Charles.

I’ll thank you not to try looking for me. There’s nothing to see. My life is beyond reproach; I am no danger to anyone, human or mutant.

Erik

 

-

 

June 2nd, 1974

 

Dear Erik,

I’m not sure what kind of life you’ve managed to carve out for yourself, but mine can hardly be described as ‘retirement’. If you have ever been the primary guardian of eight teenagers and ten children (two of whom are under the age of six) you wouldn’t reach for ‘quiet’ as a go-to adjective.

That’s not a criticism I intended to level at you, by the way. If you don’t want to share your exploits with me it’s your prerogative.

The light fades on the veranda steps as I write this, just as it did when you stayed here. That was over a decade ago now. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

I have no idea about the postman. Maybe my powers fluctuated by accident. You could have a telepath nearby, I suppose.

Yours,

Charles

 

-

 

June 20th, 1974

 

Charles -- 

I’m assuming that you know I’ve moved, and that my lack of a return address won’t hinder your correspondence. Not for the first time, I marvel at the reach of your power, and at your subsequent inane uses for it. I am not at all convinced by your excuses re. the postman. But that is an argument for another day.

As for my vision of you living a peaceful life as a wise yet benevolent headmaster to your group of youths, you can relax. Your response – while caustic -- set the record straight, I can assure you.

Unbelievable to you as it may be, the passage of time moves heavily when one is locked up. Just as I’d imagine it slips unevenly and inconsistently when one is floating through a drug-induced haze.

Forgive me. The days are too long for me to ruminate on the fading light, as darkness has long since fallen by the time I return to my rooms. Think of me working an eleven-hour factory shift and try not to smirk into your evening tea.

I enclose a poppy, which I hope hasn’t been too badly damaged in transit. The blooms create a striking effect in the fields surrounding the factory, like a fire raging across acres of land. Their petals flutter as if ablaze. A single pressed flower hardly compares to the real thing, of course, but that’s beside the point.

Erik

 

-

 

July 1st, 1974

 

Dear Erik,

If I am underusing my powers, you sound as though you’ve ceased using them altogether. I infer that you are at least working in some form of manual labour, which I’m assuming you do on your physical rather than your ferrokinetic strength. I may be jumping to conclusions. I may just finish this paragraph and move on for fear of wandering off on some kind of tangent. 

That apology was warranted. The last ten or so years haven’t been easy for either one of us, and I’m sorry to say that I still hold you at least partly to blame for my self imposed exile, however irrational that might be. Pain breeds irrationality. It doesn’t make any sense. But then, I think that you know that better than I ever will.

Thank you for the poppy. I was about to say that it has been a long time since anyone gave me a flower, but I think this might be a first.

Are poppies symbolic of war, or peace?

In anticipation,

Charles

 

-

 

July 15th, 1974

 

Dear Charles,

You’re bad at apologising.

Erik

P.S They are symbolic of both.

 

-

 

July 27th, 1974

 

Erik --

You don’t give an inch, do you?

A man who can so easily bend metal yet remains so immovably rigid in every other aspect of his life. You bastard. I can feel you laughing at my indignation even now.

A part of me likes to think that I’m redeeming myself in your eyes now that I’m no longer wasting my time, now that our old plans are finally coming into fruition. Another part wonders why I’m still, unfailingly, reaching out for your approval. 

Now the balance of our lives has tilted again, and you’re the exile.

After everything that has passed between us you’d think I might have learnt to hold my cards closer to my chest, but here I am espousing on the nature of our friendship. You’d shut me up if you were here, but you aren’t.

Write more than a couple of lines back to me, for heaven’s sake. It’s a waste of postage otherwise.

Yours,

Charles

 

-

 

August 16th, 1974

 

Dear Charles,

You don’t need anyone to validate you. If I am immovable then, in your corner, you are utterly unwavering.  If you weren’t, I doubt I’d have as much admiration for you as I do. It’s a strange kind of irony, considering that if either of us were more malleable, our agendas may dovetail neatly and conclusively.

I am not as gifted as you are in the art of meandering diatribes, but I’ll do my best. If this makes you think that I am as determined to please  you , then you are wrong, because I’m not. It’s merely that a certain amount of isolation has been necessary, given my current predicament. Our correspondence is the closest thing to conversation I’ve had for some time.

You were correct in your assumption that I am keeping my powers well hidden. I do use them, but only sporadically, privately, for minor convenience. If you asked me now to move a satellite dish, I would have to find a very powerful memory. At any rate, it’s unlikely to come up. Manual labour has honed my body (consider it for your students, it may tire them out and quieten your evenings) but my senses are fainter now than they have been for decades.

When I walk home in the evening, I can feel the iron filaments ground into the furrows of the fields, old shrapnel mixed in with the soil. History stands at my back here, Charles. I can feel it. I wonder that it’s not one of the reasons I’ve stayed for so long.

Erik

 

-

 

August 29th, 1974

 

Dear Erik,

After all these years, I wonder that you still find new ways to surprise me. I’d invite you to Westchester if I didn’t think Hank might have a thing or two to say about it. I think the word ‘megalomaniacal’ was bandied around a little, once we returned from Washington last year. Not by me, you’ll be surprised to hear.

You left me, again, but then you also left behind the helmet, and allowed me within reach of you again. So you contradict yourself; you leave me even as you draw nearer.

Maybe we’re both a bit of a living contradiction, you and me.  You asked me last year if I sacrificed my powers to walk. You sacrificed your freedom, and then your powers, and now you’ve voluntarily exiled yourself from both and you’re hiding amongst the humans. Forgive me if I sound baffled.

It’s possible that I can, once again, hear your hypothetical laughter emanating from some corner of Poland as I write this. Poor Charles, you say, ruminating obsessively, trying to make solve every problem through lateral, logical reason.

You’d be right, of course. The world moves rapidly, without sense. Cause crashes perpetually into effect. Why do I feel as if I’m constantly playing catch up? Are you in on some internal code, some intel that I am not privy to? As a telepath, you may appreciate my embarrassment at having to ask this.

Sometimes things just happen that way. Sometimes, you happen.

Yours,

Charles

 

-

 

November 13th, 1974

 

Dear Charles,

It is my constant endeavour to keep you on your toes, so to speak. I have no intention of coming anywhere near the Xavier Mansion or any of its dezions. I wish to neither endanger any fellow mutants, nor to have any contact with them whatsoever.

You seem to be striving for omnipotence, Charles. While I am sure the world would flourish under your benevolent yet mushy style of dictatorship, you must understand that I have as much power to control the turn of the earth as you do. (On a literal sense, possibly more… I may look into that.) 

We are each, in our turn, doing our best. For you that means cloistering yourself away in that school of yours as a tutor for our kind, biding your time. For me it means this, at least for now.

At any rate, I doubt that it would be a good idea to relinquish any more of myself than I already have to you.

Erik

 

-

 

December 10th, 1974

 

Dear Erik,

Do I not count as a fellow mutant any more? I’m not sure whether to be gratified by that.

When we met, you told me that prior to our meeting, you thought you were alone. I told you that you weren’t, that you didn’t have to be. You chose extremity where I chose moderation, and it drove us apart. We seem to circle back to each other no matter what path we walk upon, no matter where the years take us.

You were far away, and the medication numbed by telepathy, but it didn’t matter. Sometimes I thought I could still feel your mind.

Call it what you want, Erik. You’re out of the reach of true solitude. Perhaps you always will be. You have been, at any rate, since you met me.

Yours,

Charles

 

-

 

January 21st, 1975  
  


Dear Charles,

I keep you quite apart from my political struggles. You are an entity unto yourself, yet somehow inexorably linked into everything. How do you do that? The delineations of my mind used to sit quite comfortably, dividing the political and the personal.

Then you came crashing through in that way of yours and left everything in a mess.

You’d probably give me that smile, were you here, and tell me that the political  is the personal. Stop that. You catch me at a vulnerable time, with a half of questionable gin at my elbow, the wind whistling through the gaps around the window frame. I have with me a white knight from that excessively decorated board you kept at the mansion.

Forgive me. I had my suspicions that I may not be coming back, even then.

Erik

 

-

 

February 1st, 1975

 

Dear Erik,

First of all, a very happy new year to you too.

Your last letter took a while to wend its way here. Are you plotting something? Not that you’d reveal yourself through correspondence, of course, but you might at least drop me a clue.

The last time your plans didn’t involve me, you ended up dropping a stadium on me. You therefore appreciate my curiosity in this matter.

On a rather more serious note, that knight gave us all quite a lot of grief (me) and several frantic hours of searching (Hank) before I finally gave it up as a lost course. What possessed you to do such a thing? Is this sentimentality, Erik?

I rather thought that was my speciality, not yours.

We’re halfway into the new decade. The years seem to slip away from me before I can properly grasp onto them. I sit in the window seat overlooking the sloping lawn, watching the students skating over the lake. It could have been a thousand years ago we sat here debating the pros and cons of mutant visibility. I have one clear memory from that afternoon – me, turning to look out to the lake, you, reaching over, touching my face, just briefly. Just once.

I never asked you why you did that. It never occurred to me to look into your mind; everything felt like it was laid out very cleanly, then.

It’s cold here. I expect Poland is colder.

Yours,

Charles

 

-

 

February 15th, 1975

 

My dear Charles,

What makes you think I’d divulge anything of importance to you? You appear to have taken more from me than I originally thought. Forgive me for wanting something for myself.

Regardless, you have nothing to fear from my corner. I’m staying out of your way, and you are staying out of mine. It’s become rather of a pattern of ours, hasn’t it? As for the stadium, I am sorry. It was neither necessary nor intentional to incapacitate you. Though as I recall, it didn’t slow you down once Mystique removed my helmet.

And that was a surprise above every other, that day, the familiarity of your mind against mine. Although I’m not sure you felt the same, I seem to recall you swearing quite creatively and extensively.

I think you know why I did that, Charles. I think you know.

It’s late. Goodnight, my friend.

Erik

 

-

 

February 23rd, 1975

 

Dear Erik,

You are a fool.

I am also a fool, naturally, but I am the kind who can admit his foolishness where he sees it, and tries to better himself accordingly. Call me sanctimonious (you are, I can hear it even now) but I can’t sit by and send you letters without asking, seriously, once again, to come back to Xavier Mansion.

You don’t have to be alone. This request may have something to do with me, I’ll admit. Sometimes I wake up in the night, thinking I can feel you, quiet and cold, scheming away in some Polish backwater.

I want you here. I want you back, that sunlit day, that window seat, that wanting to turn my head into your hand, to feel your fingers in my hair, your mouth on mine.

Forgive me my bluntness. We’re both getting older, and I find I am impatient. Everything seemed so quick in my youth, so easily within reach. That life feels almost as if it belongs to a different person.

The window seat is the same, and the sunlight will come with time. But I want insensibly, incontrovertibly. I try to put things back together that have grown individual, grown apart.

And I don’t care. Please come back.

Yours,

Charles

 

-

 

March 12th, 1975

 

Dear Charles,

You ask too much of me. I can just as much come back to you, to teach in your school and make nice with the government officials I am sure you are fending off with increasing anxiety these days, as you can abandon your life to come with me and live apart from humankind.

So we’ve arrived at a stalemate, as always; you with your love of control, me with my bull headed designs upon freedom. We can’t let each other go. I can’t come back, Charles, because it doesn’t work out between us. That’s a forgone conclusion and I think you know it, somewhere. It’s buried in one of those places of your mind, one of those truths that you don’t like to acknowledge.

There are two versions in my head of those months we spent together.

In one, I feel your eyes on me when I’m not looking. I sense the buzzing undercurrent between us, all the things you’re consciously holding back from me. I watch your mouth, the way you tuck your hair behind your ears. I touch your face, once; you look at me with your blue, assessing gaze. My hand falls away.

In the other I take you in my arms and kiss you. I love you in that other place, and no matter that everything falls to ruin, no matter that it only deepens the crevice that has not yet severed us. No matter.

I want you without reason. We push back and retreat from each other like the tide.

Leave me, Charles. Leave me be.

Erik

 

-

 

March 16th, 1975

 

Dear Erik,

Even if nothing I have to say can convince you to come back to me, don’t be so overdramatic as to cease contact altogether.

You might be out of reach, even for me, but I will go to my grave arguing with you if it’s the last thing I do. Don’t deny me, not when you do it so well.

I never replaced the white knight. I now use a cartridge case I found on the veranda a few years ago. It’s a little melted from the impact but it serves. You should’ve cleared up after yourself, although I’m sure you took your gun with you when you left; at any rate, I’m not sure how I feel about the kids finding spent cartridges lying around.

I can’t believe you’re actually behaving rationally for once. It’s as if, whatever I do, you contrive to balance me out.

The truth of it is that I live my life reasonably. I have to, having put myself into the position that I have, I’m a guardian, a protector. I believe that we must exercise control, and compassion, to forgive where we can and shape the world for the better. You are my antithesis, my shadow.

I miss you desperately.

Yours,

Charles

 

-

 

[RECIPIENT NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS: RETURN TO SENDER]

October 20th, 1975

 

Dear Erik,

This may be a little mawkish of me but you left me at a bit of a loose end when last you wrote. I considered using Cerebro to clarify your location but it felt a little grasping, somehow.

You tell me you love me, and then you retreat, back to some unknown corner of the globe. I’m once again trying to make sense of you. I fear this exercise may end up taking a significant portion of my life.

Did I somehow offend you?

Yours,

Charles

 

-

 

[RECPIENT NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS: RETURN TO SENDER]

June 21st, 1975

 

Dear Erik,

It doesn’t matter. We’ll see each other again. We always do.

All my love,

Charles


End file.
